The desire to maintain the setting of certain toggle switches in either the “on” or “off” position has existed for many years. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has placed in effect rules which require that energy sources be locked out prior to any work being performed on an electrical circuit. These rules are intended to prevent injuries resulting from someone turning on the power while maintenance or other work is being done on that circuit. A variety of circuit breaker lockout devices are known in the art and generally include a housing which is positioned over the toggle switch to prevent movement of the toggle switch as well as having apertures through which a shackle of a lock can be inserted to prevent removal of the lockout device.
Typically, individual padlocks cannot be installed on adjacent lockout devices due to space constraints. Prior circuit breaker lockout devices generally receive a lock that is positioned perpendicular to the circuit breaker. The perpendicular orientation of the padlock prohibits adjacent circuit breakers from receiving an individual lockout device. As a result, one padlock is often used with multiple circuit breaker lockout devices. This is not desirable since all circuit breaker lockout devices would have to be unlocked at the same time. Thus, it is desirable to provide a circuit breaker lockout device that enables adjacent circuit breakers to be individually locked.